String Theory, which is stronger, Caltech or Stanford?

[LiXinghe]

Hello everyone. I am an international student from China. Currently I received offers of a PhD position from both Caltech and Stanford. I applied for Hep-th and my main interests are formal field theories and string theory.

I know both Caltech and Stanford are great schools in physics. And it seems that Stanford has more professors in high energy theory than Caltech. However when I look more carefully, most of the professors at Stanford focus on phenomenology. And Caltech faculties (like S.Gukov, A.Kapustin) focus more on the mathematical aspects. Then it's hard for me to decide which graduate school to go.

BTW: Stanford offers me TA+RA position with salary 36K. Caltech offers me a fellowship of 32K. But financial reasons aren't important, are they?

 

[jtbell]

Stanford offers me TA+RA position with salary 36K. Caltech offers me a fellowship of 32K.

You need to take the cost of living into account. The San Francisco Bay area (Stanford) is notoriously very expensive. The area near Caltech (Pasadena / Los Angeles) is still expensive, but maybe somewhat less so.